Mick McCabe: Buena Vista coach Tory Jackson gets his team's attention

January 4, 2013

Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

If the boys basketball players at Saginaw Buena Vista thought they were getting a hip, young coach who was going to turn the BV program into a free-wheeling outfit, they were terribly mistaken.

Former BV great -- and I do mean great -- Tory Jackson is 24, so he is young and he is as hip as you can get in a rookie coach. But he also is a strict disciplinarian, and BV is going to be a team in every sense of the word, which the players learned the hard way last week.

Jackson, who led BV to two state championships and played in a school-record 136 games at Notre Dame, sent a message to his players in the strongest way possible last week when he forfeited a game with Shepherd.

In an era when some coaches are giving free reign to their players and look helpless as their players turn games into open gym time, Jackson is going in the other direction.

"What I wanted in life I had to earn," he said. "Nothing was given to me. It's a small school -- a lot of times these kids think things should be given to them, handed to them. With things being handed to them, they feel they never have to put in the work. They don't have to show up, or when they do show up they don't have to go 110%."

If this sounds like a practice issue, that is exactly what it is. And it drives Jackson out of his mind.

Skipping or arriving late for practice are two things Jackson never did. And as far as not going 110% at practice, well, Jackson wouldn't have known how to do that, either.

"That's one thing I can say, I never really had that problem," he said. "Sick or whatever, I always wanted to practice. I had best friends I was going against, and we practiced harder because it made us a better team. I never gave a halfhearted practice. I wouldn't get anything out of it if I went halfhearted."

This is what you need to know about Jackson. He scored 2,518 points at BV, fourth most in state history. Yet, he is second in Notre Dame history with 694 assists.

He became what his team needed because in his mind the team always came first.

Now, it would have been nice had he given Shepherd more notice before forfeiting, but Jackson believed this is what he had to do to make an impression on his players.

"If I didn't make a statement it would have been a terrible season regardless of the record," he said. "I wouldn't be doing the job as a coach, helping these kids become better men. That was a big-picture thing. I wanted to get them to understand it's more than just basketball at the end of the day."

The good news is practices have been markedly better since Jackson told his players that if they were going to have Allen Iverson's attitude -- "We're talking about practice," Iverson said at the conclusion of the 2002 season -- they might as well not show up.

"Iverson is a great player, but I was definitely the opposite of that," Jackson said. "I don't have a knock on Iverson at all, but it would be tough to see him on a coaching staff."